Therefore, in order to find success in screenwriting, it is necessary to understand how audiences work. And your first audience is your reader. I don’t mean reader in the sense of a particular Hollywood industry professional, though winning over such readers is critical to a writer’s success. By reader I mean a typical human being who can read.

Believe it or not, but even veteran Hollywood readers are typical human beings, and they are looking for scripts they think will please other typical human beings.

Here are a few things about audiences that may help start you on your screenwriting journey:

1. Audiences follow action

Audiences follow action: somebody doing something. This goes for a story as a whole (e.g., Mark wants to build a social network online and pursues this goal), a sequence within the story (e.g., Mark goes about trying to find an investor), and a scene (e.g., Mark persuades a financier to back him). When you write scene description, likewise keep this in mind. Audiences follow action. Don’t list items in a scene, the way you might in a stage play. For example, instead of starting a scene:

INT. OFFICE – DAY

A dark dusty office with a pile of papers on the desk and a poster that reads “READ” on the wall. Jonathan enters and sits down.

It’s better to render it like this:

INT. OFFICE – DAY

Jonathan enters a dark dusty office, walks past a poster on the wall that reads “READ,” and sits down at a desk with a pile of papers on it.

Rendered the second way, the audience does what comes naturally—following action—and along the way makes discoveries about a location. And they’re much more likely to actually remember the details.

2. Audience like clear motivation

Audiences like to know why people are doing the things they’re doing. It may be useful to introduce a character who exhibits puzzling behaviour as an attention-grabber, but audiences will tune out pretty quickly unless they discover the reason for the behaviour (see the opening of Silver Linings Playbook—at first Pat seems to be muttering incoherently, but very quickly, the gaps in this puzzling behaviour are filled in).

Salient information that helps audiences understand onscreen behaviour and action is called exposition.

3. Audiences love anticipation

Audiences are constantly trying to figure out where you’re leading them.

We are all blessed (or cursed?) with frontal lobes, which are the place where we ruminate about the things we observe and try to anticipate future events based on clues in the present.

Thus:

4. Audiences like (authentic) details

Your job as a writer is to turn the audience into keen observers of detail.

The audience is watching for clues it can use to piece together where the story is going; it’s your job to provide those clues and make sure they notice them, and that the clues lead them where you want to lead them.

For example, A husband buys candy and flowers on his way home from work. Meanwhile, his wife places a gun in the nightstand drawer. We know what these mean: the husband plans to make love while his wife is planning to make war.

Of course, it may be that the gun is a birthday present for the husband, and the husband, meanwhile, has poisoned the candy to kill his wife. If so, congratulations: you’ve exploited the audience’s propensity to piece together clues and anticipate the future in order to throw them a surprise twist, which is something audiences love.

5. Audiences hate data dumps

Audiences like their exposition in bits and pieces.

They won’t remember information that is delivered without any context.

Instead, following #3 and #4, it’s best to reveal information in digestible pieces, clues that the audience can then piece together to arrive at an understanding of the background of the story.

Note that these clues have to be visual or aural, since movies convey sight and sound only.

6. Audiences look for cause-and-effect

Audiences respond to cause-and-effect patterns.

Again with our frontal lobes: when we observe the world, we have an irresistible tendency to seek cause and effect relationships in the phenomena we see.

This propensity is so strong, we sometimes create cause-and-effect relationships where there are none (“The Green Bay Packers lost the game because I didn’t wear my lucky cheesehead hat.”) Audiences will respond readily when the events and scenes you present have a cause-and-effect connection.

If there is no such connection, audiences will tend to tune out (or, possibly worse, impose cause-and-effect connections where they are not intended).

7. Audiences latch on to characters

Audiences respond best when they can identify with a character.

It has been argued (for example, in Edward Wilson’s The Social Conquest of Earth) that storytelling confers a practical advantage on the human species: by listening to a storyteller describe the dangerous adventures of a character, we can experience that adventure emotionally—and learn from it—without having to expose ourselves to danger.

Thus audiences will not respond readily to a story in which they can’t connect emotionally with—empathize with—a main character.

8. Audiences hope… or fear

Suspense keeps audiences paying attention.

If a character we empathize with (see #7) pursues a clearly defined goal (see #2) and runs into obstacles to that goal, the audience will stay interested (and keep turning your script pages) because it is suspended between hope and fear.

They will hope the character achieves the goal, and fear that he or she won’t.

9. Audiences need structure…

The “three act structure” is the instrument for creating suspense.

In order to create suspense, the audience 1. needs to get to know a character and learn what the goal of the character is, 2. watch the character pursue that goal despite obstacles. These two steps create and sustain the suspense.

To end or resolve the suspense, the audience needs to 3. learn if the character achieves the goal or not. These three pieces are the three acts in the three act structure.

10. … On every level

The “three-act structure” applies to scenes and sequences as well as the movie as a whole.

Each scene arguably can have its own three-act structure: a character wants something, tries to get it and encounters obstacles, then gets what he wants or doesn’t. E.g., Will Pat persuade Tiffany to give a letter to Nikki? That’s not the main question in Silver Linings Playbook; it occurs in just one scene.

But the question keeps the audience in suspense for that one scene.

Writing your scenes this way will ensure audiences won’t be able to put your screenplay down: they’re going to be too busy wondering what happens next.

Now go on and do good work!

-Paul Gulino

(This article was first published on Writers & Artists)

Paul Gulino

Paul Gulino is Associate Professor of Screenwriting at Chapman University, USA. View his Chapman University page here and his Storytelling Strategies column here. You can purchase a copy of Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach here.

Producers are both revered and maligned in the industry – described as both facilitators and gatekeepers, enablers and note-givers. But they’re some of the hardest working people on the team, navigating the money and the politics that makes everything else possible.

The Hollywood Reporter sits down with six top awards season filmmakers — Peter Chernin, Eric Fellner, John Lesher (Birdman), Marc Platt, Cathleen Sutherland (Boyhood) and Emma Thomas (Interstellar).

If you liked this, check out more videos about screenwriting or filmmaking. And if you know of a great video on Screenwriting, let us know in the comments. Thanks!

Oh, and if you have some more time, and would like to learn more about Pete Docter, check out this one hour video!

It is now more difficult than ever to get a screenplay optioned or sold, if it doesn’t appeal to the main movie-going demographics. Being a great writer is not enough; your story must stand out immediately, and for this to be possible, you need to have a strong, fresh concept.

Check out which movies work and which don’t, often you’ll find that those with poor concepts fall by the wayside.

High Concept vs. Low Concept

Many have tried to define what high concept really means. I believe the following all apply:

• can be expressed in a simple sentence
• immediately appeals to the imagination
• can easily be remembered
• has never been done before
• doesn’t need a star cast to attract an audience
• not necessarily on a blockbuster budget

Examples of high concept movies were:

• Die Hard
• Armageddon
• Air Force One

But also low budget films such as:

• Phone Booth
• Buried
• Liar Liar

From this list, you might think that I count a movie like Locke among high concept, too. I don’t. Only filmmakers get excited about seeing Tom Hardy in a car for an hour and a half. It would have been different if he had to save the world before reaching his destination, though. So, stakes…

High concept scripts don’t always need to be written to the very highest standards. Studios understand that money can be made, and they will be more than happy to buy the script and worry about some further development later. In this case, they are really interested in the idea, and less in the writer or script.

You will find that many original blockbuster films (not remakes or sequels) fall in this category.

Tony Gilroy (the Bourne movies, Michael Clayton, Armageddon) responds to people’s pitches. You’ll learn how he distinguishes good concepts from ‘execution dependent’ scripts. Later we will explain further what this means.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/91689107

EXERCISE:

Choose 5 highly successful films, then 5 poorly performing ones. Now see if you can identify whether they are high or low concept.

Execution Dependent Screenplays

If your story is low concept, don’t despair. Low concept screenplays written by newcomers do sell – on occasion. What makes those scripts attractive to buyers (producers/studios)?

First and foremost, they must be page turners. If you have a story full of suspense, and that moves so fast; or if you boast a writing style that is so seductive that the reader can’t put the script down, you are on a winner…

Low concept ideas are often called ‘execution dependent’. It means that they can still work, provided the writer is highly skilled. And if you demonstrate superior writing skills, the studio or producer may well be interested in hiring you to write something else for them.

Finding Good Concepts

Everybody is capable of coming up with great ideas. The problem is that too many people settle for their first idea, and think it will write itself. Or worse, they believe that people will pay them money for the idea, even before the script is written.

I am contacted regularly by people who are convinced they have the next blockbuster idea, and hope I will find them someone who will write it for them. This is not how it works. Ideas are ten a penny. Unskilled writers overestimate the power of their ideas. Once they try developing them, it shows they weren’t really valid movie ideas in the first place.

The best way to finding a sellable concept, is to brainstorm many, and regularly. Don’t sit around waiting for that great movie idea to hit you. Thousands, tens of thousands of screenwriters have made it a daily habit to brainstorm concepts, to write down loose ideas they have in the course of the day, and review them regularly. If you don’t do this, the odds are stacked against you.

To trigger your brain into finding original concepts, you may try the same techniques people use to battle writers block. To become a successful writer, you will need to find out what works for you.

Now, how do you test a concept?

By writing the Logline.

-Karel Segers

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

Ed Wood was the legendary writer/director of camp 1950s classics such as Plan 9 From Outer Space, Night of the Ghouls, and Orgy of the Dead, and you’ve almost certainly seen his work homaged – and parodied – a dozen times over.

So next time you’re tempted to write ‘KILLER SPACE TOMATO ATTACKS SHRIEKING WOMAN,’ just think of that mountain of unproduced screenplays in a warehouse on the outskirts of Hollywood.

[vimeo 105095050 w=1500 h=825]

Script Cops: Ed Wood Gang from Jamie Wynen on Vimeo.

If you liked this, check out more videos about screenwriting or filmmaking. And if you know of a great video on Screenwriting, let us know in the comments. Thanks!

Tony Morphett has written or co-written seven feature films. Among his TV writing are ten telemovies, twelve miniseries, and some hundreds of episodes of TV series drama. He devised or co-devised seven TV series. He has won 14 industry awards for TV writing.

TV Writing in Australia

Q: Vince Gilligan sent in his episodes of X-files. He then started writing and co-producing X-files. That’s how he broke into TV writing.  How do writers typically break into TV writing in Australia?

A: Vince Gilligan followed a route a lot of aspiring screenwriters in LA try.  Write a spec script for a successful series and hope to get a gig. For him it turned up trumps. It’s a case of “many are called but few are chosen”.  But what the hell, it’s one way of getting past the gatekeepers.

Shane Brennan, now showrunning both NCIS series, was a successful screenwriter here. But he had an urge to work in LA. Every year he’d go over and pitch and finally pulled it off in a sensational way.  David Williamson came into screenwriting from stage.  He segued into movies and his first TV writing was on my 1970’s series Certain Women.  I’d seen The Removalist and was blown away and recommended him to our script editor Glyn Davies. 

Laura Jones also got her first TV writing gig on Certain Women after doing a screenwriting course. If memory serves, that was in Canberra. Debra Oswald, known for her TV writing on Offspring, I think, started as a stage playwright. Peter Gawler – Underbelly and lot of other credits – got a job at Crawford Productions. I think he was a 3^rd Assistant, segued into the script department, became a script editor, then the great writer he is today. 

Crawford’s was an amazing hot-house for TV writing talent.  A lot of people got their start there but there’s nothing quite like it today.  The film schools are turning out writers, some better than others.  The problem with some of the film schools, is that they encourage their students to follow the auteur filmmaker myth.

Directing and screenwriting are two very different disciplines. Each can take years to master. There are some who can do it, but not many.  Daniel Krige went to AFTRS to do screenwriting and segued into writing/directing.  His West is I think a good film, and he may be an exception to my rule.  He came to me when he was about 16, had left school, with a big lever arch file with the first handwritten draft of West inside. 

I agreed to read it and found to my horror that it was a good script. It needed work, but don’t they all? With a lot of nagging some friends, I got him into AFTRS when he was only 19. 

The problem with some of the film schools, it seems to me,
is that they encourage their students to follow the auteur film maker myth.

Me?  I’d written a novel called Dynasty about a media company owning family.  I’d spent 10 years in TV as an interviewer/documentary man and thought it’d make good television.  I pitched it to David Goddard, then head of ABC-TV drama, he commissioned a pilot. 

Then he went back to England and his place was taken by John Cameron, one of the best heads of drama I’ve known.  He commissioned a further 10 eps, then a further 13. I really learned TV writing on those series, primarily from Glyn Davies. He was my script editor, who had worked in the UK on No Hiding Place and The Rat Catchers.  I owe Glyn much, he was a mentor and friend.

I suppose the lesson in all this is to get noticed somehow. And … to have the work to back it up when the chance comes. The one characteristic that all writers possess is that they write.  It’s not “one day when I get time I’ll sit down and write my novel/stage play/screenplay.”

It’s “sit on your arse and do it now.”

Writing for TV: The Showrunners

Q: Do show creators generally come from the ranks of staff writers?  What sort of staff writers generally rise up to create and run their own TV shows?

Reg Watson was on Grundy’s staff.  More recently Bevan Lee on staff at Seven has developed  great shows – A Place To Call Home, Winners and Losers, Packed to the Rafters.  Crawford’s shows were all, I think, developed in-house.

I’ve created or co-created seven series.  Debra Oswald won a NSW Premier’s award for the telemovie pilot of Offspring.  The pattern these days is for shows to be created in-house or by indy poducers. Blue Heelers was by me and Hal McElroy, Water Rats by me and John Hugginson, both freelancers but done for Hal McElroy.

Q: Does TV writing require a particular personality type?

A: Creating a show needs a writer’s brain. Running one needs a producer’s brain.  Some people like Shane Brennan and Bevan Lee  have both and can switch from one to the other. It’s a hard trick, and I’ve never been tempted to do it because running a show would take away from my TV writing time, which is my first love.  

Q: As you mentioned, the audience is more segmented than ever. How is the rise of social media/YouTube/VOD impacting on how TV shows are funded?

A: Yes, the audience is now segmented but TV goes on. I’m not up the business end, but my understanding is that advertising revenue remains strong.  Screen Australia will invest in telemovies and in miniseries but not episodics.  This policy can distort the nature of the show.  A natural episodic idea will now usually need a spine running through 13 episodes turning it into a miniseries. You can do this only 5 times (=65 eps) before ScreenOz cuts off investment funding. 

Sea Patrol and Underbelly both did this which is a factor in why both series ended at 65 eps apiece.  Generally speaking new technology doesn’t kill old.  Radio didn’t kill books, TV didn’t kill radio, the internet and smartphones and X Boxes have not killed TV.    

Q: Are Australian TV shows profitable in general?  What is being done to increase the profitability?

A: That depends on the ratings. If a show on commercial TV rates well it will attract advertising.  If a show doesn’t rate well, you’ll see it moved to a later time slot, and usually a different night and it won’t be picked up for another series.  No one promised us a rose garden and life in the jungle is tough.

 Q: Are there any Australian TV shows that do a great job of integrating social media and the internet to reach a greater audience?  How is this impacting the advertising model?

A: Like everyone in media, I’m watching social media/internet.  With downloads and YouTube and so on the way, ratings are counted has changed.  These days you get the Overnights and then the Consolidated Rating which gives you a better idea or how many people are watching but it doesn’t and never has tell you if anyone’s in the room or paying attention.  Kids multitask – they watch TV and their X Boxes simultaneously.  No system’s perfect.  

Q: How is TV writing changing in the age of digital media?

A: It’s perhaps got crisper and faster moving but the fundamentals haven’t changed since we sat around in caves telling stories to each other about the last Mastodon hunt.  Humans want to be told stories.  Why we do is a two bottle argument. My own view is that fiction is a training ground for real life.  You learn strategies for living from stories and live many other people’s lives.  

Q: What in your view, as a long-time successful practitioner, are some of the upsides and downsides of the change in the landscape of TV writing in Australia?

A: In many ways  we’ve become a coarser society.  In my youth, men generally didn’t use profanity in front of women, they kept it to the public bar.  Men were in that sense functionally bi-lingual, and women didn’t use language that would make a sailor blush. That age is now gone. 

The trap for younger writers in this is to  take the easy route when it comes to expressing, say, anger.  There’s also what I call the Fucking and Killing Sub-Genre which can get boring.  Think of the American studio films of the 40’s and 50’s. They didn’t need it to get their effects.  Deadwood, the most profane miniseries I have ever seen, was both beautifully made and suffered poverty in its dialogue.  Fuckety-fuckety-fuckety.  Noel Coward it is not. 

Q: Do you have an idea in the works that you’d like to see as a series.

A: Half a dozen which I won’t tell you about because they’re not yet as finished as I’d like.  If you want to see some of my orphan ideas, which have never seen light of day, go to www.tonymorphett.com and click Bottom Drawer then Miniseries and/or Episodic. 

It’s a heart-breaking old town, is it not?

Q: What is a project you’re working on currently?

A: Several, with several producers.  Also a science fiction novel which is a sequel to my Starship Home, now available as an Amazon Kindle eBook if I may for a moment indulge in blatant self-advertisement.

Q: As a female, I’m curious to find out whether the actresses in Australia have the same problems as in Hollywood.  That is, there are too many actresses (more women than men study drama) and not enough leading roles.

A: I think it’s the same here.  What may change it is the trend for more and more women becoming heads of drama and/or development.  This has come about, I think, because for several decades women have become producers, script producers and script editors for TV writing.  Sue Masters, Caroline Stanton, Susan Bower, sister of the late great Lynn Bayonas. She was also distinguished in this field. Kim Wilson, the list goes on and on. Having said that there are some women who bring audiences with then. To name a few,  Lisa McCune, Asher Keddie, Rebecca Gibney, Claudia Karvan and Essie Davis, currently tearing up the set as Phryne Fisher.  She’s had an Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress, and a Tony nomination.  She was the stand-out actor in The Slap, and I’d happily watch her read the phone book.  These are genuine stars in television

 Q: You’re an author of science fiction novels too.  What do you think will be some of the things we’ll see in the future?

Technology changes but human nature remains the same.  In the 50’s, it was a convention in SF that computers would get bigger and bigger – sometimes planet sized.  The chairman of IBM once said that there was maybe a market for 5 computers to service the world. These would be 30 ton Godzillas.Then Jobs and Wozniak put together the  personal computer and couldn’t get Atari and Hewlett Packard to come aboard.  Then Facebook came along and I thought it was a campus fad. Kid stuff. 

Then Twitter and I thought “what can you say in 140 letters or less?”  1984 and Brave New World were once thought of as either/or visions of the future but it turns out that both Orwell and Huxley were right.  For me, the best SF tells speculative stories in exotic, imagined  locations.  It’s like historical fiction played out in imaginary worlds.

But I wouldn’t bet the house on any of it coming true.  

Thank you Tony for agreeing to this interview, and providing such insightful answers about your experience in TV writing.

-Eda Utku

If you liked this, check out more videos about screenwriting or filmmaking. And if you know of a great video on Screenwriting, let us know in the comments. Thanks!

Update 21 October 2015: Sadly the Video was removed, so the link no longer works. I have tried locating an other source, but couldn’t find one. If you know of a place where this video is posted, please let us know, so we can restore the link. Thanks!

If you liked this, check out more videos about screenwriting or filmmaking. And if you know of a great video on Screenwriting, let us know in the comments. Thanks!

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

If you liked this, check out more videos about screenwriting or filmmaking. And if you know of a great video on Screenwriting, let us know in the comments. Thanks!

You try to invent a world which is complex and many layered, like the real world. But unlike most of real life (which tends to be badly written and edited), in a good film a set of themes emerge which embody a clearly identifiable line or arc, which is the story.

It seems to me that one element of writing for movies stands above all others in terms of making the eventual movie as “cinematic” as possible: establishing point of view. The audience experiences the action through its identification with characters.

The writing needs to lay the groundwork for setting up pov before the actors, cameras, microphones, and editors come into play. Each of these can obviously enhance the element of pov, but the script should contain the blueprint.

The audience experiences the action through its identification with characters.

Let’s say we are writing a story about a guy who, as a boy, loved visiting his father at the steel mill where he worked. The boy grows up and seems to be pretty happy with his life as a lawyer, far from the mill. But he has troubling, ambiguous nightmares that eventually lead him to go back to the town where he lived as a boy in an attempt to find the source of the bad dreams.

The description above doesn’t say anything specific about the possible use of sound in this story, but I have chosen basic story elements which hold vast potential for sound. First, it will be natural to tell the story more-or-less through the pov of our central character. But that’s not all. A steel mill gives us a huge palette for sound. Most importantly, it is a place which we can manipulate to produce a set of sounds which range from banal to exciting to frightening to weird to comforting to ugly to beautiful. The place can therefore become a character, and have its own voice, with a range of “emotions” and “moods.” And the sounds of the mill can resonate with a wide variety of elements elsewhere in the story.

None of this good stuff is likely to happen unless we write, shoot, and edit the story in a way that allows it to happen.

The element of dream in the story swings a door wide open to sound as a collaborator. In a dream sequence we as film makers have even more latitude than usual to modulate sound to serve our story, and to make connections between the sounds in the dream and the sounds in the world for which the dream is supplying clues. Likewise, the “time border” between the “little boy” period and the “grown-up” period offers us lots of opportunities to compare and contrast the two worlds, and his perception of them.

The place can therefore become a character, and have its own voice.

Over a transition from one period to the other, one or more sounds can go through a metamorphosis. Maybe as our guy daydreams about his childhood, the rhythmic clank of a metal shear in the mill changes into the click clack of the railroad car taking him back to his home town. Any sound, in itself, only has so much intrinsic appeal or value.

On the other hand, when a sound changes over time in response to elements in the larger story, its power and richness grow exponentially.

-Randy Thom

Photocredits: Graphic Stock

Randy Thom

Randy Thom is the Director of Sound Design at Skywalker Sound.

He has been nominated for 14 Oscars, and received 2. One for The Right Stuff, and one for The Incredibles.